For every time of plenty, there must be a time of famine. The digital crops aren’t bearing much fruit this week, so I hope you stored away some games from previous sales, or you’ll not have much to play this weekend. The deal of the week is still very special, but aside from that you’ve got a small discount on an already cheap game, a series of games that have been discounted to less previously, and a game that realistically they couldn’t charge much more for even if they wanted to. For more deals on all formats throughout the week, make sure to regularly check SavyGamer.co.uk

Swords and Soldiers HD – £4.89/€6.99/$6.99
Apply coupon “sinterklaas”.
Here you’re buying direct from the developers, but you’ll get a code to register the game on Steam (not sure if that’s optional or mandatory). Alec told us wot he thinks of this the other day. He said:

It really is a tug of war rather than a battle of wits, though. Or perhaps it’s more like an arm wrestle between two people in funny hats. Key is that it’s very determined to keep its players involved and optimistic for as long as possible, rather than leave anyone feeling overwhelmed and outgunned.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People – £6.31/€7.42/$9.95
Hello, my name is John Walker and Lewie has said I’m allowed to write in his column. I like Strong Bad. He is funny. He has boxing gloves for hands! That’s funny! They are funny games and I like them. This is easy. Of all the Telltale games, some are good and some are bad. These ones are good. They make me laugh and have good puzzles. I like them. It is good that they are cheap because then if you have less money you can buy them and play them and they are fun. You should do that. Thanks to Lewie for letting me have a go!

Shadowrun – 75p/$0.99/80 MS Points.
Included purely by virtue of there not being very much on sale this weekend? I’ll let you be the judge of that. I’ve tried to get my head around the regional availability/pricing, but can’t seem to get an answer for how much it costs in Euros, nor whether it is available in Eurozone at all. At release, Shadowrun was lots of different things to lots of different people. A worrying misuse of a treasured license, a new era of Microsoft throwing it’s weight behind crossplatform gaming, a seemingly pointless reason to “upgrade” to Vista, and if you believe Kieron’s review, too expensive. Here we are are, three and a bit years later. The game is a lot cheaper, GFWL is now rubbish and free instead of rubbish and expensive, many more people have DX10 compatible operating systems and Microsoft have become as apathetic about crossplatform multiplayer as everyone else. Now that the dust has settled, is there still a fun PC game to be had here?

April is not a simple character, a template onto which we may impose ourselves to experience a world. She has issues with her father, trouble letting people get too close, and a propensity to run away rather than face difficulty. She is a complex and broken human being, thrown into a situation too big to understand, and arguably destroyed by it. She’s a person.

Read his full Retrospective here, why it made him here, and Kieron did a Making of here.

That was just the Thanksgiving sale…. a warmup if you will. I really hope the continue with the gift packs in future sales, that was a great idea.

I just started playing Lara Croft: Guardian of Light. Loads of fun. Also, very late on the bandwagon, I’m playing L4D2 with friends, fantastic. My FPS skills have clearly deteriorated since my days of Quake 2, UT and CS though.

It is available in the EU. Maybe not in all of it, but I’ve bought it. If you liked Counter Strike it seems to be an interesting spin on that idea. Very good potential, nowhere near as bad as people made out, but not particularly great either. Yet to try out the PC version though to see what the port is like.

Yeah, I know. But I’d still expect them to know (or rather tell me) what’s being installed and not just say “well, maybe if you’re lucky..”. We’re not talking about something like PunkBuster here, that’s clearly some 3rd-party-software needed for other games…it’s about some DRM-software that just stays there wihtout any use and isn’t uninstalled. Or maybe it is..who knows?

That game is truly horrific. I’m not sure what’s meant to be good about it at all. I remember my girlfriend trying the demo, we agreed it was the most irritating game ever produced by man. It does have some cute animations, but everything good in it is counter-acted by the worst voice overs that have ever been recorded in the history of man.

I can only comment on the 360 version of Viva Pinata, but I loved it. However, as with John’s beef with Just Cause 2, the game gets in the way of the fun. Happily, the longer you play it for the better it gets.

When the game begins you’re constantly interrupted by a barrage of cutscenes, fights, invading sour pinatas, and achievement notifications, and all you want to do is be left alone to work out what’s going on. However over time the flood of new stuff slows down, and so do the cutscenes. You can find items that get rid of the sours and other pests. You learn to keep incompatible pinatas apart. Once that’s all out of the way, you end up with a rather charming little garden management game that’s really quite lovely (at least until you start getting cynical and start a zebra production plant to try to lure the lions in…).

And if you don’t think quackberries and macaraccoons are ace there’s a good chance you’re dead inside.

They’re doing a deal a day for the first 14 days of December, although the Graxia deal from earlier doesn’t appear to be a deal anymore and I can’t see a new one. This weeks “regular” sale items are virtually identical to last weeks, although Fortis at a couple of quid for an old school top down shooter might be worth a punt.

Shadowrun the FPS was actually a pretty good game on its own (I only have it because it could be gotten for cheap :)) but they massacred the Shadowrun name. If they’d called it anything else – just changed the name, mind you, and nothing else – it would have been great. As it is, pretty good game + destroying a venerable name = bad.

Shadow Run is a fundamentally alright shooter. I had some kicks with it and I found some of the magic abilities to be really fresh. I mean every game has a “Tree of Life” health deployable but why haven’t we seen more teleport?

Don’t agree with the “sales drought” narrative at all, at least not from where I am. The GamersGate’s Holiday sale is pretty massive – both in terms of titles and in terms of the size of the price reductions – and one of the best that (often underwhelming) site has produced to my knowledge.

Charming, I finally have a few quid to spend and there is nothing I want :( already have the longest journey (fancy limited edition too) and strongbad. I guess on the gamersgate sale Lylian: Episode One and the lunar pack look kind of interesting so has anyone played them or should I just take a risk?

Must be the calm before the storm. Steam are gonna screw us all with their winter sales and Lewie’s gonna have his work cut out for him.

I remember being quite excited about Shadowrun. The developers apparently came at it with a “what would happen if we gave every player different hacks” mindset when thinking about powers. Alas I did not upgrade to Vista for a long long time so never tried it.